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[SirQuiamus]

Yeah, some of the main factors on price of food goods in the US is travel expenses and holding expenses, which is why things like canned soup and ramen are so cheap compared to actual vegetables. Things like ramen are packaged at the factory, require only gas costs to move to store, and then are just handled in big pallets and placed on shelves without any special handling. On the other hand fresh vegetables are grown, harvested, then they need to be refrigerated while waiting to be transported, then transported on more rare refrigerated trucks/trains, generally for at least a couple days, and then finally refrigerated in the store. Those extra costs add up very quickly.

In addition a lot has to do with the distance things get moved, if you buy stuff in a farmers market in the US it's generally a lot cheaper than buying it in supermarkets, just because of the distance most of the supermarket stuff needs to get moved before it gets to the store. To put it in terms of European scale, it would be a lot like if France didn't grow most of its own food, but instead imported the majority of it from Poland. Farther distances mean more costs, which mean higher prices.

I've been told that the relative cheapness of supermarket junk is rather due to food industry lobbying and government subsidization of wheat and corn at the expense of fresh goods. Freight and logistics is probably not the biggest factor.

Sadly, bugs don't give as much sustenance as the grains you feed them would give, and as we all agree, bugs aren't appreciable.

Bugs are definitely appreciable if you don't need a magnifying glass to notice them.   

[i2amroy]

While things like that might have a large impact on domestically grown food, I'd like to point out that many things you find in a supermarket are not, in fact, even grown in the US at all. To quote a study done by Food-hub.org in 2005: "Today, the typical American prepared meal contains, on average, ingredients from at least five countries outside the United States". Yes, things like government subsidies raise prices on local goods, but they do it to the point where foreign food goods can beat their prices, and for foreign goods it's the shipping and handling that costs a majority of the price.

(In other words, we're both technically right. If you look at the things you actually buy from the store many of them have transport and logistics as a major part of their cost... because they come from out of the country. This only happens because of the things we've already done in our own country to drive certain prices high enough up that the international ones are the cheapest. Were we to remove those limitations, local prices could drop, which would eliminate foreign goods and their freighting costs).

[Graknorke]

Sadly, bugs don't give as much sustenance as the grains you feed them would give

Neither does any other animal you're going to eat. But it's probably still more efficient to grow bugs than to intensively farm enough of the right kinds of plants to get people all of the nutrients they need in their diet.

[TempAcc]

If I absolutely had to eat bugs, I'd much prefer to eat fried crickets (or something) then snails. Molluscs have a nasty tendency of carrying terrible parasites and/or viruses which are really terrible for human beings.

Anyway, during the worse times in Camboja in the Khmer Rouge days, with massivefood shortages, the cambojans had to eat pretty much anything to survive, and they turned to eating fried tarantulas, lizards, bugs and snakes. Gordon Ramsay tried a fried tarantula and he wasn't very happy with the taste :v

[penguinofhonor]

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[Graknorke]

Don't pigs have a tendency to do that too? I'm pretty sure most meatborne parasites that humans get come from pork.

Hepatitis. Fun stuff.

[NullForceOmega]

All this food stuff is amusing, but ultimately completely worthless as an actually actionable idea.  Noone is going to back any of these concepts in sufficient numbers to actually change things, and I for one will actively oppose you.

[Graknorke]

All this food stuff is amusing, but ultimately completely worthless as an actually actionable idea.  Noone is going to back any of these concepts in sufficient numbers to actually change things, and I for one will actively oppose you.

Uh, thanks?

[penguinofhonor]

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[NullForceOmega]

I agree, fuck humanity and its meaningless attachment to keeping things stable.  Mama (mother nature) doesn't give a damn about climate change, why should I?

[Angle]

Because you'll likely be the one to suffer for it.

[NullForceOmega]

I don't live in a coastal region, and I am damn sure that even near-apocalyptic levels of weather pattern changes aren't going to kill off humanity.  Didn't during the ice age, won't now.

[Angle]

It won't kill us all, it'll just kill a bunch of us and make the rest suffer a lot.

[Radio Controlled]

I don't live in a coastal region, and I am damn sure that even near-apocalyptic levels of weather pattern changes aren't going to kill off humanity.  Didn't during the ice age, won't now.

How about the people who do live in the coastal regions? Do you not care for the suffering of other human beings?

[penguinofhonor]

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